


Familiar

by mayachain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Coping Mechanisms, F/M, Future Fic, Harry Potter Epilogue Compliant, Parselmouth Harry Potter, Post-War, hopeful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 13:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16682296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayachain/pseuds/mayachain
Summary: After the war, Harry sometimes goes out of his way to talk to snakes.





	Familiar

Most of the time whenever Harry Potter felt restless, he went flying. Even when he was not playing Quidditch or racing someone, soaring through the sky never lost its shine. It symbolised, it felt like, it breathed through him: Pure freedom.

Sometimes, though, what Harry needed was not the sensation of headwind against his face. Sometimes, especially when neither Ginny nor Ron were available to come flying with him, he longed for something more earthbound to calm him. Sometimes, rising Auror Potter apparated to a city that had a zoo and sought out the serpents.

He hadn’t really told anyone that he’d retained his ability to understand snakes even though the Horcrux was gone. He hadn’t _lied_ , either; most people who’d known more about the connection between he and Voldemort just assumed. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them; how could it be, after everything? But Parseltongue had been the first heartening magic in his life before he knew what it was called, for all that it had become part of something vile. As much as he loved Ginny and his friends, he quite liked that there was something in this post-war future that was his alone. Harry had to wrestle with nightmares and flaring after-effects from Cruciatus, but this – this was a legacy from the war years he didn’t mind.

Besides, he felt very strongly that this was something that Voldemort had never done. Had the London Zoo even owned snakes when Tom Riddle had been young? Not that the boy could have afforded the fare any more than little Harry could have decades on. The image of a too-somber Tom younger than in Dumbledore’s first memory made him smile, though, and the lost opportunity made him feel sorry for both that child and himself. Well, he at least was grown up now and there was nobody stopping _him_.

Sometimes he brought Teddy with him and watched curious snakes watch in awe as his godson gave his all to style his hair in their scales’ colouring. He only paid for his entry during those shared visits – otherwise, he was there for the snakes, not the zoo’s Muggle owners – but provided that the snakes felt outright cosy in their Terrariums, he always made a donation that same evening.

Harry never found out if the Boa Constrictor he’d inadvertently freed via accidental magic had ever made it to Brazil. The only detail he learned for certain was that his short-term friend had never been recaptured and imprisoned in the London Zoo. Snakelings that had been born years after the incident still gushed about the day the glass disappeared. It was a cautionary tale or a glorious adventure, depending on who did the telling.

It was restful business, talking to serpents. They didn’t expect anything from him. Be it in London or Glasgow or Blackpool or one of the smaller ones, the reptile inhabitants were content to chat with Harry for a while and then let him go rejoin humanity again.

And if he sometimes took advantage of his habitually cast Notice-Me-Not Charms to help a snake vanish from its terrarium… If he apparated it to the countryside, the Forbidden Forrest, put it in a crate to be sent on its way _home_ … If there was a small colony that amassed around various Potter properties with strict instructions to never bite humans unless one of Harry’s kids was endangered… He’d more than earned this tiny foray outside the law, right?

…

He snuck a garden snake first into James’ bedroom and then in Albus’, never able to decide if it was relief he felt when each boy only babbled at its wriggling. When little Lily looked at the snake he’d brought and the two hissed back and forth, he found his answer – and called Ginny to witness: He was proud.

 

.


End file.
